Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/139

 village of Petone, nestling under its fern-clad cliffs.

We turn sharp round a projecting cape to the left, and Wellington, the empire city, lies before us. In the lee of the cape we have evidence of the prevailing war scare. On the point a gang of men are busily toiling at the earthworks for the heavy gun battery. Below on the beach a cluster of snowy military tents betokens the presence of other large bodies of men engaged in forming approaches, and in other camp duties.

But can that stately city be Wellington? What a change from the shabby, lowly, insignificant village of twenty years ago.

When I last saw Wellington it looked from the harbour but a collocation of shambling huts, sprawled down higgledy-piggledy along the scant margin of pebbly beach, between the hills behind and the harbour in front. Barring the provincial buildings and Parliament House there was scarcely an edifice of any pretensions to be seen. We were rowed ashore to a landing-stage, rickety and green with slime, among blackened piles, on which was built the Empire Hotel, then the fashionable resort of visitors. The town consisted of one long straggling business street, known as Lambton Quay, with a few weatherboard dwellings perched here and there on the terraced hills behind.

Now! The wizard wand of progress has waved to some good purpose during the twenty years that have elapsed. Under the auspices of the